


Memories

by Spidergwenstefani



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Memories, all alone in the moonliiiiggghhhttt, i forgot to proof read this until LATE i can't tag coherently rn, im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 06:03:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17238758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spidergwenstefani/pseuds/Spidergwenstefani
Summary: “Come downtown with me,” Bucky repeats. There’s no question in his voice, but it’s not a command either. He stares patiently down at Clint, who notes that his face is just as pretty when viewed upside down.“Okay,” Clint says, still twisted over a little weirdly. “Why?”“I want to go to a tattoo shop,” Bucky says, still staring Clint down. Clint blinks.“You want to get a tattoo?”“No.”Clint pauses, waits for the explanation, but Bucky just raises his eyebrows at him expectantly.“Oh, now?”“Are you busy?”AKA Bucky drags Clint along to dig up some old memories in Brooklyn in the middle of the night. It's less creepy than it sounds.





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nana_Evans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nana_Evans/gifts).



> For Nana who said "Do what you want, just let my boys be happy in the end" which, like. Amen.

“Hey,” Bucky says, startling Clint out of his semi-meditative state. The pile of arrows goes skittering across the coffee table, and he jumps high enough to bang his knee on the underside. Sam shoots him a judge-y look from his own armchair, but Bucky plows onward. “Come downtown with me.”

“What? Clint asks, craning backward at an awkward angle to meet Bucky’s eyes. He started his whole arrow inventory on the couch, but a combination of leg cramps and long-undiagnosed ADHD brought him down to the floor barely half an hour in. He has no idea how long he’s been working on his trick arrows, although he’s just now noticing the sun has gone down outside Tony’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Bucky can be quiet, but the fact that he managed to make it all the way up behind the couch without Clint noticing is a better testament to Clint’s spacing out than to his assassin skills.

“Come downtown with me,” Bucky repeats. There’s no question in his voice, but it’s not a command either. He stares patiently down at Clint, who notes that his face is just as pretty when viewed upside down.

“Okay,” Clint says, still twisted over a little weirdly. Bucky’s leaning his arms on the back of the couch. His body language is a distant echo of casual, but his face is just as intense as always. Clint realizes he probably should have gathered more information before agreeing. “Why?”

“I want to go to a tattoo shop,” Bucky says, still staring Clint down. Clint blinks, finally twisting around to view Bucky right-side-up.

“You want to get a _tattoo?_ ”

“No.”

Clint pauses, waits for the explanation, but Bucky just raises his eyebrows at him expectantly.

“Oh, now?”

“Are you busy?”

Clint spares a glance at his arrows, now strewn across the coffee table. There are a few fletchings that could do with fixing, and he still hasn’t gotten around to testing the release on his putty arrows. But.

But Bucky’s never invited him anywhere before.

Sure, they’ve trained together. They’ve gone on missions. They’ve bonded over Chinese takeout and Xbox games. One time Bucky even grabbed Clint’s shoulder while laughing at a joke he made. The memory still makes him grin, which. Maybe that’s a little sad.

“No,” Clint decides. “I’m not busy.”

There’s a short laugh from the direction of the armchair, and Clint forgot Sam was even in the room. Their eyes meet, and Sam just shakes his head slowly. Whatever. Let the man who hasn’t dropped everything to help out a hot super soldier throw the first stone. If Clint wants to abandon his arrows to go _possibly_ get matching tattoos with his crush, Sam’s got no right to judge.

“Something funny?” Bucky asks, his voice the same shade of friendly-hostile it always is when he talks to Sam. Sam just holds up the paperback in his hands.

“This book,” he says, unconvincingly. “This book is very funny.”

>>=========>

“Why are we getting tattoos?” Clint asks. They’ve been on the subway for nearly fifteen minutes, and he’s a little worried that Bucky’s got no clue where they’re actually going. He’s handling the crowds surprisingly well, though, barely flinching when another passenger pushes past him or talks too loudly.

“We’re not getting tattoos,” Bucky says. The train slows to a stop, the doors sliding open and letting out a handful of people. The garbled train voice says something that sounds like Delancey Street.

“Are we getting off on Delancey?”

“We’re not getting off on Delancey,” Bucky says, with the same flat tone he announced that they wouldn’t be getting off on Second. Or Broadway-Lafayette. Or West Fourth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-third. It occurs to Clint as the doors slide shut that he could be fifteen minutes into a kidnapping. Maybe Bucky Barnes is actually a serial killer, working the world’s longest con. He opens his mouth to put in a request for his body not to be dumped in the East River, a tragic end even for his train wreck life, but Bucky cuts him off.

“Wait,” he says, taking his eyes off the station map for the first time in a very long while. “Did you think we were getting tattoos?” Bucky’s looking at him with a stare that’s half judgmental and half impressed. Well, maybe sixty-forty.

“Why else would we go to a tattoo shop?”

“Because- I _told_ you we weren’t getting tattoos. Did you think that’s what you were agreeing to?” Seventy-thirty.

“If you can’t give me another reason why we’d be going to a tattoo shop, I think we can both call it a logical assumption.”

“We’re going to a tattoo shop because it’s a place I remember from before the war. Do you even _have_ tattoos?”

“Getting tattoos is kind of a big no for an international assassin. Identifying marks are a bitch when you’re a man of mystery.” Clint rates Bucky’s final open-mouthed stare at eighty percent judgmental, twenty percent impressed. The doors slide open again, the jumbled electronic voice barely interrupting their conversation. “Are we getting off on East Broadway?”

“We’re not getting off on East Broadway,” Bucky says, the flat tone he had for the last eight stops now replaced with more than a little exasperation. Clint would take a moment to be proud if he wasn’t so surprised.

“Are we going to Brooklyn?”

“Well, seeing as there’s no other stop until York, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re going to Brooklyn.”

“Oh,” Clint says. “Oh no, Buck. Did Steve not tell you about Brooklyn?”

“What, did Brooklyn sink into the fucking river?” Bucky asks, sounding tired. “Did HYDRA bomb it off the face of the Earth?”

“No,” Clint says hurriedly, backpedaling as he realizes he might have put slightly too dramatic of a spin on the concept of gentrification. “God no, It’s just- The hipsters are getting to it. There’s hot yoga. And new age record stores, and restaurants that serve food inside a boot.” Bucky squints at him.

“Why would you serve food inside a boot?”

“Fuck if I know.” Clint shrugs. “I’m just saying, tattoo shops in Brooklyn today are going to be very different from tattoo shops in Brooklyn eighty years ago.”

“Worth a shot,” Bucky says, giving a one-shouldered sort of shrug as the train starts slowing down toward York.

>>=========>

The tattoo shop, as it turns out, is still there.

It’s closed, of course, because it’s nearing one in the morning. Clint makes a note that the City That Never Sleeps does not, in fact, extend to tattoo artists.

“Well,” he says, cupping his hands against the glass door to read the hours posted inside. “You can always come get your tattoo another day.”

“For the last time, I’m _not_ -” Bucky pauses, catching what must be a shit-eating grin on Clint’s face. “Oh, fuck off.” He gives him a weak shove, and Clint feels his smile turn genuine. The feeling of Bucky’s hand through his sweatshirt sets his heart beating unreasonably fast.

“There are no ads for kombucha in the window, so I think your tattoo shop is safe for the time being.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” Bucky says. “If I stop indulging you, maybe you’ll stop saying such weird shit.”

“Not a chance,” Clint says, but he shuts up anyways because Bucky’s kind of fallen into an expression just shy of reverential. It’s not just the tattoo shop that’s caught his eye. His gaze flickers from one building to the next, street lamps and neon reflecting in his eyes as the wrinkle in his brow gets deeper and deeper.

Clint’s not sure exactly what to do with himself. Silence seems vital, for the moment, so he bites his tongue. He feels like he’s walked in on something private, even though Bucky dragged him here himself. Why _did_ Bucky bring him along? Was Steve not home? This feels like a Steve kind of thing. Maybe Clint was the next best thing, in terms of a buff blonde guy to stand in Bucky’s peripheral while he goes misty-eyed at the sight of a crumbling city block.

They’re an awkward distance apart. Clint’s hyper-aware of each sound he makes, the rustle of his jeans as he rocks back and forth, the scuff of the sidewalk against his shoes. He feels like he should be holding his breath. He tries to take a few steps back, to let Bucky have his bubble of nostalgia. He keeps his steps light, but Bucky still turns before Clint can add more than a yard between them.

There’s something new flashing in his eyes, and it sends a shiver down Clint’s spine.

“I used to work here,” he says, and his voice has something new in it too. He sounds wistful, but surprised, like he’s only learning the words as he says them. “I cleaned, kept the storeroom neat.” His face is just on the edge of a smile. “I’ve been thinking about this place for weeks. I kept asking Steve about it, but he didn’t know what I was talking about. It’s because I never told him.”

“You never told him you worked here?” Clint asks, and Bucky shakes his head. “What, does Steve hate tattoos or something?” That seems to fit Captain America just right, and Steve Rogers not at all. Bucky frowns like he has to think about the question.

“No,” he says quietly, then more surely. “No, It was why I got the job.” Bucky turns around, searching for something along the worn storefronts. His eye catches on one that’s empty, a faded ‘For Lease’ sign in the window. “Here,” he says, and he heads toward it, grabbing Clint’s hand and dragging him along. The skin-to-skin contact is more distracting than it should be, and Clint has to fight through the sound of his own heart hammering in his chest to hear what Bucky says next. “There was a barbershop here,” Bucky says, and Clint can just imagine that a few faded marks on the brick are where the barber's pole used to be attached. “There was a guy. Um, Tommy. Tommy Price. Had a smile like a dream.”

“You took a job because the guy that worked down the street smiled at you?” Clint would laugh, but Bucky seems to have forgotten they’re still holding hands, and he’s not risking anything that might make him pull away.

“I took a job because Tommy Price was halfway through a peacock tattoo that covered his whole back, and if I worked Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays then I could see him shirtless more often than not.”

“A peacock?” Clint says, because he forgot he was trying not to offend. Bucky just squeezes his hand instead, turning to Clint with a smile that knocks the wind out of him for a moment.

“I said he had a great smile. Not a word about his brains.”

“You pick ‘em good, Barnes,” Clint says.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

Clint’s halfway towards a comeback when he realizes what Bucky’s said. He can almost hear it as his brain clicks on why exactly Bucky Barnes has brought him along to chase down memories of guys with pretty smiles. Why they’re standing here on an old street in Brooklyn, holding hands under the lamplight.

“Did you-” Clint clears his throat, because now his voice is coming out too soft. “Did you ever ask out Tommy Price?" Bucky turns back to the ghost of a barber shop, actually wrinkling his nose at the question.

“With the peacock tattoo? You kidding me? If I went steady with a guy like that, Steve would actually murder me. He was skinny then, too, so I’m talking a slow, painful death. Would’ve strangled me to death with his noodle arms, maybe.”

Clint can’t stop himself from laughing, still giddy with the press of Bucky’s hand in his own. When he turns to answer, ask if Steve’s Disappointed Mom look was just as effective with half the height, the softness in Bucky’s eyes makes his brain short circuit.

“I dreamed about it, though,” he says, squeezing Clint’s hand again. “There was a cafe a block down. Served the best damn coffee in Brooklyn. Maybe it wasn’t for Tommy Price, exactly. I always wanted to go, though. Get coffee and a sandwich. Sit by the window and talk to a guy with a pretty smile.”

“Do you think it’s still there?” Clint breathes, and then, because he can’t stop himself; “Maybe tomorrow you can come back with Sam.”

The look on Bucky’s face is worth it.

“Pretty smiles, head full of lint,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “I have a type.”

“Where was that coffee shop again?”

>>=========>

Bucky’s tattoo shop may have slipped through hipster clutches, but the cafe had no such luck. The only upside to the recently renovated Java Lamp is that it seems to be a twenty-four-hour coffee shop, which Clint can absolutely get behind.

The coffee’s not half bad, and the sandwiches are almost worth what they paid for them. Bucky politely declines the complementary wheatgrass juice. Clint flat out refuses and buys a chocolate chip muffin just to be contrary.

The girl behind the counter is a swirl of technicolored hair, piercings, and vivid tattoos, and she disappears into the back as soon as Clint and Bucky are settled in their window seat. Bucky’s a little thrown by the whole thing. He keeps shooting dubious glances at all the mason jars and exposed wood, but Clint thinks he could sit here and watch Bucky squirm until the sun comes up if it means he’ll keep punctuating it with those soft glances at Clint every time he smiles. Even when Bucky starts laughing at him for getting chocolate all over his mouth. _Especially_ when he kisses it off for him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this was stressful af until i decided what to write about and then it was fun af. I feel like this is too short. Is this too short? I'm sorry if this is too short.
> 
> Also @ Nana: The short version of my very convoluted thought process for the inspiration here was that I was thinking maybe I would pick a quote from a book or movie or show you liked on your blog as the basic theme, but then the quote I got most attached to was from a book you mentioned in the tags of a post like years ago I think? Idk but either way the inspo for this was the quote “Lembrar-se é viver outra vez.” from the book Lucíola by José de Alencar and I'm super sorry if that makes me seem like a weirdo stalker who went way too deep into your tumblr blog <3


End file.
